The Sleeping World by Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes ’08 (Touchstone).
With this crisp debut, Fuentes takes readers to late-1970s post-Franco Spain, where there are protests in the streets and punks in the bars. Mosca, a university student whose brother Alexis was arrested two years earlier and has since “disappeared,” ditches her finals and with three friends takes part in a protest. After the protest turns into a riot, at which the four students beat a police officer, they flee to Madrid and later to Paris, where Mosca hopes to find Alexis. The novel does a fine job portraying the turbulent tones of a time known as “The Transition."

Dancing With the Tiger by Lili Wright ’86 (Putnam).
In her sprawling debut thriller, Wright, author of the memoir Learning to Float, takes us tumbling through Mexico as we chase after Montezuma’s turquoise funeral mask. The multi-tiered cast includes Christopher Maddox, a meth-addicted looter who digs up the artifact and sells it to Reyes, a drug lord, and Anna Ramsey, who heads off to buy it for her father, Daniel, a disgraced New York collector. While the novel often feels like a caper as the mask keeps changing hands, Wright nicely captures the moral complexities of trading in antiquities.

All Is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker ’89 (St. Martin’s).
Walker’s first thriller opens with the brutal rape of fifteen-year-old Jenny Kramer as she wanders off from a tenth grade party in affluent Fairview, Connecticut. Soon Jenny is treated with a mix of drugs designed to make her forget what happened. But this leads to numerous unintended consequences because Jenny knows, from the fragments she can remember, that something horrible has occurred. Narrated in a clinical voice by her psychiatrist, the novel unwinds many secrets about Jenny’s parents, their marriage, and the town itself.